


promises, kept and broken

by kingstqrk



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Comfort/Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, but lots of love and hope as well, i really wanted to tell andromeda's tale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 21:28:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16048907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingstqrk/pseuds/kingstqrk
Summary: "Andromeda is forty-seven when she is once again taught that promises can be broken. She thinks of Ted, whispering in her ear as he left, promising to be back before she knew it. As she pours dirt on the ground, she thinks, broken.She thinks of her daughter, apparating from the house in a rush, asking Andromeda to look after Teddy and promising she’ll be back to take over baby duty soon. She pours more dirt, on a different patch of ground, and again thinks, broken."The life of Andromeda Tonks née Black: a tale of love, loss and the things that make us go on.





	promises, kept and broken

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! So I was struck by inspiration and I just thought I need to tell Andromeda's story. She's one of the most affected by the war and has such an interesting backstory yet we barely see/hear of her. So I sat down and wrote this story in one go. I really hope you enjoy it. 
> 
> Please leave a comment letting me know what you thought!

Andromeda Black is eight years old when she first learns that promises are sometimes broken. Her parents promise they’ll be back before dark. She was afraid of it back then, and Bella was never as soft with her as she was with Cissy. She leaves Andromeda in her own room, huddling under the covers, frightened. 

When her parents finally do return, they tell her that they’d been at an important meeting. (It was one about blood purity.) They say that comes before Andromeda, promises be damned. 

Andromeda is forty-seven when she is once again taught that promises can be broken. She thinks of Ted, whispering in her ear as he left, promising to be back before she knew it. As she pours dirt on the ground, she thinks,  _ broken _ . 

She thinks of her daughter, apparating from the house in a rush, asking Andromeda to look after Teddy and promising she’ll be back to take over baby duty soon. She pours more dirt, on a different patch of ground, and again thinks,  _ broken _ . 

* * *

Bellatrix gives her a look of approval when she’s sorted into Slytherin. Andromeda is the middle-child, never quite fitting in. Bellatrix and Narcissa have nicknames for each other but Andromeda is always just Andromeda. She doesn’t have Bellatrix’s fiery beliefs that make their parents so proud, nor Narcissa’s delicate ability to please her elders.

Andromeda is sharp lines like them, yes, but the colour that fills those lines is softer; bold but not cruel, strong but not intimidating. It’s never enough for her parents. So when she is sorted into Slytherin, Andromeda finally feels like she belongs. 

Slytherin is good to her, in many ways. She makes friends, excels at school. Her teachers often praise her. Cosy would be the wrong word for the common rooms that rest in the dungeons, but there is a sense of belonging Andromeda feels there. 

Cissy joins them soon enough. Spending time with her is always easier than it is with Bella. Narcissa’s elegance settles down into something softer and calmer when it is just the two of them, whereas sometimes it feels like Bellatrix is always fired up. 

One time Bella walks into the common room late. When the others ask why, she tells them she received detention for hexing a muggleborn first-year. The others grin. One seventh-year even claps her on the back. 

“What did she do?” Andromeda asks. She holds her gaze when everyone looks at her, even as she wants to shrink. “For you to hex her,” Andromeda clarifies. 

Even Cissy gives her an exasperated look. “She was a muggleborn,” Bellatrix says, looking at her as if she is an idiot. When Andromeda is in bed later that night, she thinks about how the correct answer to her question was  _ nothing _ . 

* * *

She meets Ted outside the greenhouse. He knocks her into the dirt by accident. She glares at him as he tries to apologise and walks away.

The next week he does it again, and he’s so clumsy that Andromeda believes him when he claims it is another accident. His apologetic features don’t warm Andromeda to him though. She notices him in Herbology, growing a small, leafy-green flower. At the end of the class, he hands it to her. 

“The assignment was to grow it for a week,” she tells him disdainfully. 

He shrugs. “An apology accepted is better than a good grade.” 

It’s only weeks later, after she has learnt his name and started talking to him by the greenhouse, that she tells him that such an attitude is so remarkably Hufflepuff. He just grins, taking it like the compliment it wasn’t intended as. 

Soon their meetings extend beyond rushed conversations before and after Herbology. When Ted sees her in the corridors, he stops to say hello. They’re prefects together, and on the odd night their duties overlap. Those nights are spent with hushed conversations and muffled laughter. 

It’s on one of those nights that they kiss for the first time. It’s dark and they can’t see and Andromeda’s heart is thumping and she thinks she’s not just alive but living. 

His grin is so delightfully bright, Andromeda can’t help but think, and so personal. As if he was a star in a night sky whose guidance was reserved for her and her alone.

* * *

One time Ted comes up to her in the Great Hall, just to say hi. Bellatrix sees.

* * *

Bellatrix isn’t there in Andromeda’s final year of Hogwarts, but she has a parting gift that remains. She tells their parents about the muggleborn Hufflepuff who Andromeda is friends with. Her parents shudder in disgust. Narcissa is instructed to let them know if Andromeda contacts the boy again.

Andromeda breaks the news to Teddy that she can’t speak to him anymore on a night where they have prefect duty together. He huffs. 

“If only you didn’t have to be in Slytherin,” he tells her. Andromeda feels downright offended. 

“I’m proud to be in Slytherin,” she says. “Slytherins are ambitious. They get what they want and they’re not afraid to want it.” 

“What do you want?” Ted asks her softly.

She kisses him once more, and she decides that she doesn’t want to stop. 

* * *

Her parents don’t scream when she tells them that she has been seeing Teddy all year, and refuses to break things off. She’s seventeen and no longer a student of Hogwarts. She can stand up to her parents.

They very calmly instruct her to get out of her house. They allow her time to pack her bags, which later Andromeda will think of as probably the closest thing to a declaration of love they had ever given her. 

Bellatrix watches her with disappointment and disapproval written all over her face. She has married Rodolphus, and Narcissa next to her has the perfect boyfriend in Lucius. It’s only Andromeda who can’t get it right, as always. 

Narcissa’s face isn’t disappointed. It’s sad, and almost scared. Andromeda spends many nights thinking what Narcissa was scared of. It’s only many, many years later that she finds out that Narcissa was, and always has been, scared of losing her family. 

* * *

Andromeda moves into an apartment with Ted. He hooks it up to a telephone and they live in a muggle block of flats. It’s alien to Andromeda, and yet with Ted here to guide her it feels less like she’s been dropped on another planet and more like an adventure she has chosen.

They spend the first day painting the walls of every room different. Personally Andromeda doesn’t see the point. 

“It’s just impractical to paint every wall a different colour,” she argues. 

“Come on, Dromeda,” Ted pleads. (He always called her Dromeda. She told him that it’s Andromeda, and that she’s the Black sister who doesn’t get a nickname. He says he’s going to change that for her. And he does.)

Eventually she gives in, not because she believes different coloured walls are really a good idea, but because the smile on Ted’s face as they paint them is worth a hundred impracticalities. 

* * *

Decorating their apartment is easy, but Ted insists on hanging up a great, bulky clock he took from his parents’ house above the mantelpiece in their living room. It is bright and baby-blue and hideously ugly. Not to mention loud.

Andromeda mentions this to him after he’s proudly put it on the wall. He just grins. “That’s why I love it,” he tells her. 

He sits her down on the sofa, and they sit together, listening to the  _ tick-tock _ ,  _ tick-tock _ ,  _ tick-tock _ , as Andromeda waits for him to speak. Eventually he does. 

“When my mother died, my father sat me down. I told him sometimes it feels like life can’t go on. Like we can’t continue because it’s so hard. My father told me that everyone feels like that sometimes. But then he told me to be quiet, and he asked me what I heard. I said I heard the clock. 

“And he told me that the sound of the clock isn’t just the sound of time. It’s the sound of a promise.” 

“A promise,” Andromeda says, the word feeling strange in her mouth. 

“Yeah. A promise that life does continue, no matter what. And it might not always be good, but it is something. It goes on, and as long as time fights to go on, so can we.” Ted smiles at her, and Andromeda laughs. 

“I’m not sure whether to be moved or question whether you just made up that story to convince me to keep the clock.” Ted’s eyes just twinkle. 

* * *

A few weeks later, they make another promise to each other, as they say their wedding vows. It’s a promise Andromeda likes.

* * *

Her parents, through their high-powered connections, make it impossible for either Andromeda or Ted to get jobs at the ministry, despite their good grades. Ted manages to get an assistant manager job at a shop for brooms. He always had an amateur interest in quidditch, he reassures Andromeda.

Andromeda herself takes shifts waitressing at a muggle restaurant. As she scrubs tables, she sometimes wonders what her parents must think of their child of the most Noble and Ancient House of Black working in a grimy restaurant in London. The thought of their disgust cheers her on as she works through long shifts. 

She and Ted joke about it, how she’s in the muggle world and he the wizarding one. He teaches her about muggle money and how to ask for tips and all the things she never thought she’d need to know. She meets dozens of muggles each day. She thinks about how her family always denigrated muggles as worthless. 

As she speaks to each muggle client in the restaurant, they tell her stories about their day or their lives or their wants. It speaks a lot of things to her, and none of those things is  _ worthless _ . 

* * *

The news about the baby is unexpected. Andromeda’s never been one to cry but she tears up when she finds out. Ted hugs her so hard and spins her around till she’s breathless.

Ted takes extra shifts at his shop so they can earn enough money to buy a house. The later months of her pregnancy aren’t easy but Andromeda goes through it steadily with the fixed determination of a Slytherin. Her belly swells and her body aches more, but Andromeda’s heart seems to expand as well, as if it is anticipating the love it will soon be giving to this baby. 

She hears her sister has joined the Death Eaters, that she’s even killed someone.  _ Bellatrix can bring death _ , she thinks.  _ I carry life. _

* * *

 

“What do you want to call her?” the doctor asks. 

Andromeda thinks about her family, about the unnecessarily long names they like to give. They wouldn’t want her giving her half-blood child a pure-blood name. Andromeda thinks,  _ screw what they want _ . 

“Nymphadora,” Andromeda tells the doctor as she holds the noisy baby in her hand. 

Ted just laughs. “We’re never calling her that,” he says, before kissing her and then the baby.

* * *

As soon as she can talk, Nymphadora proclaims that she is to be called Tonks, even though Ted calls her Dora. Andromeda affectionately rolls her eyes.

Nymphadora is a challenge when she is a baby, and remains one when she is a toddler and then a child and then, later, a teenager. Her changes in appearance can cause trouble sometimes. The first time she takes on a pig nose Andromeda nearly screams. 

But she is also a marvel. Every single thing she does is a wonder to Andromeda. She gets Ted’s bubbly spirit, but sometimes, when she sees Nymphadora fall down--but, blinking back tears, get up and simply brush her knees--Andromeda wonders if that iron core comes from her. From the steel within she had to rely upon when growing up. 

Andromeda feels a love like no other for her daughter. She wonders how her own mother could discard her so easily. She wonders if her mother sometimes thinks about her. When Nymphadora finally rests, her energy waned, her eyes closed and her head leaning on her mother, Andromeda is certain that she would think about her daughter every day if she weren’t with her. 

* * *

Andromeda still hears about her family. Ted hears a lot of gossip in his shop, and he passes it onto her, no matter how painful it is. He knows she can handle it, and it’s one of the things Andromeda loves about her husband most.

Voldemort gains more and more power. The wizarding world lives in terror, and Andromeda’s family contribute to that terror. Bellatrix kills more and more people. Narcissa’s husband is a death eater, Andromeda knows that. 

Andromeda’s cousin, Sirius, is kicked out of the family, burnt off the family tree just like she was. She sends him a fruit basket, and a note that says if ever he needs a home other than the Potters, he is welcome to visit her. 

Her parents die a few months later. Tears don’t come. They never did come easily for Andromeda. But still, one evening she just sits on the sofa, and then Ted comes and rubs circles into her back, giving the comfort she was too proud to ask for. He holds her in a safe and firm  grip. 

She doesn’t consider attending the funeral. She knows when she isn’t welcome. She sends flowers though. She wasn’t going to, but she does at the last moment, something within compelling her. She never finds out what happens to them. Sometimes Andromeda wonders if they ever reached her parents’ grave. 

* * *

The war ends, thankfully before Nymphadora is old enough to understand much of it. Still, the death of the Potters and her cousins’ imprisonment hits hard.

When Nymphadora finally does go to Hogwarts, she’s sorted into Hufflepuff, just like her father. Ted pretends to be relieved. 

“One iron-willed Slytherin is enough for this house, I think,” he says as he leans in to kiss her. 

* * *

Time seems to fly quicker when there is peace, without the shadow of death hanging over them. Soon her daughter is signing up to be an auror. Andromeda isn’t so keen on that. She remembers arguments on the matter.

“Why would you willingly get involved in a life of danger?” she asks her daughter. 

“Because it’s what I want,” Nymphadora says firmly. “And what I want is worth going for.” 

Ted grins. “She sounds just like you when you were younger.” 

Andromeda sighs but she gives in, as she knew she would. Because, really, who is she to deny someone what they want? 

* * *

Voldemort returns. Andromeda’s sister is released from Azkaban. Once again, she finds herself on the opposite end of a war to her family.

The news comes that Bellatrix has murdered Sirius. Andromeda thinks of exchanged letters, of fruit baskets sent and received, of a lifetime spent in Azkaban because of the Black name and because sometimes people see what they expect. 

She sits with Ted on the sofa, listening to clock. 

“It never ends, does it?” she asks. “The fighting. The death.” 

“Listen to the clock,” Ted says. “Nothing goes on forever. Nothing but time. Every moment is temporary. That’s why it counts.” And then he leans in to kiss Andromeda, and she feels sixteen again. She may be older, but she’s still scared, scared for her husband and her daughter, and still feeling safe in Ted’s arms.

* * *

She’s surprised when her daughter tells her that she wants to marry Remus Lupin. When she asks Nymphadora if she can have dinner with Remus, just the two of them, her daughter frowns.

“Don’t grill him, okay?” she asks. 

“Me?” 

“You can be pretty scary, you know,” her daughter tells her. Andromeda just smiles. 

“I know.” 

Andromeda cooks the dinner. Remus is so clearly nervous, fumbling as he eats and giving platitudes about how nice the chicken is. Andromeda cuts through it. 

“You were good friends with Sirius.” 

Remus looks surprised, and then slightly mournful. “Yes. He was one of the few people who have ever understood me.” 

“He was my favourite cousin,” Andromeda admits.

“He told me,” Remus says, “he talked about his cousin Andy a lot. He admired you. I think you even gave him the idea to leave.” 

“I wouldn’t take credit for that.” But she smiles and still feels warm to hear that she had given someone strength. 

“I know you probably don’t want your daughter marrying me,” Remus says, averting his eyes slightly, unknowingly. “I’m a werewolf.” 

“You’re a brave man,” Andromeda says. “And Sirius was a good judge of character. That’s why we got on so well.” Remus laughs at that. “You know, my family hated me when I fell in love with Ted. It confused me, sometimes. How could a love so intense, like the one I still have for my husband, ever spawn such hate? I kept asking that question.” 

“Did you ever find an answer?” Remus asks softly. 

“No,” Andromeda confesses. “But I think it’s a choice we make. How we react to the love around us. We can either work for it, embrace it, or we can oppose it. Sometimes opposing it is easier. But it’s worth it when you embrace it. Trust me.” 

* * *

The wedding is a simple affair. Nymphadora refuses a traditional wedding dress, despite Andromeda’s best attempts to persuade her otherwise. Still, the ceremony brings tears to her eyes. Her daughter looks beautiful even though she has chosen bubblegum pink hair. Maybe even because of it, Andromeda thinks later.

There aren’t many guests, but the Weasleys all come. Andromeda remembers Molly and Arthur from her time at Hogwarts, was always friendly with them. Nymphadora has come to know them all well. The drinks flow and Andromeda dances, with Ted, her daughter, her new son-in-law, and so on. 

She remembers her mother used to take them to dancing lessons, to make sure they knew how to compose themselves at a ball. It was all about pointed toes and tucked in arms and graceful movements. Andromeda’s dancing is not any of those things. It’s fumbling and full of laughter and near-slips and flailed limbs as Ted whirls her around. They end every song with a kiss.

* * *

Andromeda wishes the happiness of that wedding day could go on forever, but the reality of the war steps in. Things get harder from then. Her daughter works longer hours than ever. The ministry goes after muggleborns more and more.

Nymphadora’s pregnancy is a beacon of hope amidst the darkness, but the relief it brings is only temporary. Soon Ted has to go on the run. Andromeda stays with her daughter, to help her with the baby. 

It’s the hardest thing she’s ever done. 

She nearly breaks down when Ted says goodbye one last time at the door, a packed bag in his hand. “Why do I always have to leave my family?” she asks. And it does feel like she is leaving Ted, even though technically he is the one who is moving. 

Ted kisses her, as if he hopes to fill her with love rather than sadness. He’s older now, and more weary, with grey in his hair, but he’s still so much the young boy who gave her flowers when she was upset, whose smile would light up the room. 

“You’re not leaving,” he tells her. “And neither am I. We’re saying goodbye for a while. And I promise, I’ll be back before you know it.” He squeezes her hand. “I love you, Dromeda.” 

After he apparates away, she listens to the clock in the living room, and thinks about how each second is counting down till the moment that Ted’s promise is fulfilled. 

* * *

The promise isn’t fulfilled.

* * *

It’s hardly a funeral. It’s simply Andromeda, Nymphadora, and Remus, standing in their garden. They can’t go anywhere else.

Andromeda digs the hole in the ground herself. It’s hard work. She thinks about her mother telling her and her sisters off when they were younger, for playing in the dirt and getting messy. Soon Andromeda’s fingernails are covered in dirt, but it only makes her feel cleaner. 

They don’t say words when they’ve dug the grave. There’s nothing left to say. 

* * *

When her grandchild is born Andromeda feels like a small part of herself is reborn too. When her daughter presses the baby to her with tears in her eyes and says that they’ve named him  _ Teddy _ , Andromeda smiles through her tears.

* * *

They feel like a family again. Andromeda sings in the morning as she cooks breakfast, sings to Teddy to calm him down. Their house is filled with noises once more, in a way it hasn’t since Ted’s booming laughter was no longer present.

Nymphadora and Remus both work long hours, fighting in the war. Andromeda counts her blessings each time she sees them come home in the evening. They are tired and weary, but their eyes light up when they see their baby. 

Life isn’t easy, or simple. There are days when even saying the name Teddy brings a wave of grief to Andromeda. But the grief only makes the love easier to appreciate. 

* * *

One day she finds Nymphadora sitting on the sofa, looking tired beyond repair. She sits by her daughter, giving her a mug of hot chocolate. She smiles, but it is nothing like her usual boundless energy. They sit there in silence for a bit.

“You know,” Andromeda finally says. “Sometimes when I’m sad, I like to sit here, and listen to that clock. Your father once told me each sound of each second is a reminder that life goes on. And a promise that so do we. So does our love.” 

“I’m just so afraid,” Nymphadora admits. “I know I’m an auror, and it’s my job, but sometimes it’s so hard, and I just--I just feel tired. And I keep worrying, about the baby, about Remus, and you, and what’s going to happen--” 

Andromeda interrupts her. “You can worry about the future, but we can’t control it. We can do our best to protect the ones we love, but sometimes...the best you can do is enjoy the present. Those seconds aren’t going to wait for you.” She kisses her daughter on the forehead, and when she smiles this time it’s more like Tonks. 

Later, she sees Nymphadora kissing Remus on the cheek, playing with Teddy’s rattle and transforming her nose. She smiles. 

* * *

She begs her daughter not to go to Hogwarts when the battle finally comes. But Nymphadora has always danced to her own tune. It’s one of the things that makes her daughter such a wonderful person, Andromeda has always privately thought.

Nymphadora doesn’t listen to her pleas. She asks her to look after Teddy, and promises to be back soon. 

* * *

Another promise broken. Andromeda would say she’s used to it by now, but she doesn’t like to lie.

* * *

Harry Potter is the one to break the news to her. He apparates to her house and knocks on the door. It’s clear he is tired beyond belief, having not slept since he killed the greatest dark wizard of all time. She lets him in.

Andromeda can see the boy is shattered, but he offers to look after Teddy for a bit. She accepts. She doesn’t want to be near her grandson when she cries and cries.

* * *

This funeral is more attended. Minister Shacklebolt leads the ceremony. Lots of members of the Order talk, about Remus, about her daughter. Most of the people there, Andromeda doesn’t even recognise. Some people look at her with fright, and she knows it’s because she looks like Bellatrix.

She remembers who killed her daughter, and she wishes for the first time that she was a metamorphmagus. 

She keeps to herself, holding a screaming Teddy. Harry comes up to her, as well as Ginny Weasley, Ron, Hermione. Their condolences wash over her. She feels them no more than she feels each raindrop as it pours down. 

She’s glad for the rain though. They mingle with her tears, until she can’t tell which is which anymore. 

* * *

Andromeda buries her grief into looking after Teddy. It’s clear the baby misses his parents, but she does the best she can.

One day, though, Teddy cries for his mother, and nothing Andromeda can do will calm him. Harry and Ginny find her on the bedroom floor, head in her hands. They were meant to come over to spend time with Teddy, as the godparents, but Andromeda had completely forgotten. 

Ginny lifts Teddy gently and takes him to another room, rocking him up and down as she goes. Harry gives Andromeda some tea. 

“After my parents died,” he says casually, “I went to live with my aunt and uncle. They never loved me. Teddy has lots of people who love him.” 

In that moment, Andromeda feels like Harry is wise beyond his years. 

* * *

One day she runs into Molly at the ministry. Andromeda has been called in to go over some details of her daughter’s will. She sees Molly dressed in black, and instantly knows why she is there.

In a way, Molly is one of the few who understands what Andromeda has gone through, having lost her child in the war too. They start to meet up for breakfast, once a week. They talk about Fred and Nymphadora, but sometimes they talk about nothing. About how pretty the sunflowers look in the spring, about how bitter the coffee is at the shop they like to go to. 

One day, Andromeda confesses something to Molly. “I went to Bellatrix’s grave once. I wanted to spit on it, to hex the tombstone. But when I got there, I couldn’t do anything. She killed my daughter. I hate her. But I couldn’t do anything.” 

Molly holds her tight. That’s why their friendship works so well. They hold each other when it’s needed and they talk about things that don’t matter when that’s needed. 

* * *

The grief comes and goes. On some days she almost feels normal, as she dresses Teddy and feeds him. She laughs as he transforms and plays with his toys.

Sometimes Teddy’s laughter is just a ghost of the past though. Sometimes she looks at his eyes and sees another pair, sees his smile and lives in another moment. 

On a particularly bad day, she wrenches Ted’s blue clock off the wall and throws it to the ground. It shatters into pieces, and the  _ tick-tock _ finally stops. It reflects the promises broken. 

Molly comes over that day. She explains it best, repeating a saying she read in one of her books. “It’s like it’s raining. I’m walking in the downpour. The rain’s always there, but sometimes I’ll walk under a tree, or a building, and I’m dry for a while. Sometimes there will be weeks when I’m inside, and the rain can’t touch me. But it’s is always there, and some days I’ll be in the rain. And that’s ok.” 

“So grief is like rain?” Andromeda asks. 

“Exactly,” Molly says gently, “but the rain doesn’t have to block out the sun. They can be there together, and sometimes together they even create a rainbow.” 

The next day, Andromeda thinks about her wedding vows to Teddy. She thinks about how he promised to love her until he died. She thinks about how Remus promised the same to her daughter. She thinks about how Nymphadora promised to be true to herself even as she changed her appearance. 

And she goes to the clock, and fixes it with a spell, and hangs it on the wall once more. 

* * *

One day there is a knock on the door. Andromeda wonders if she’s gotten her days mixed up, because she was certain Harry wasn’t meant to be with Teddy today.

When she opens it, she sees Narcissa. The last time she saw her sister in person, not through the newspapers or through fleeting glances, but in person like this, was forty years ago. 

“Andromeda,” Narcissa says. Her face is lined, her blonde hair not as lustrous as it once was. Yet she is still so familiar. Narcissa wrings her hands. She opens her mouth to speak, before closing it again. When she finally speaks, she simply says, “I’m sorry.” 

Andromeda hugs her, and thinks that family is like a flower. Sometimes it can be gone for a season, but then bloom once again when you least expect it. 

* * *

Narcissa tells her about her son, Draco, about how nearly losing him made her think about Andromeda and her lost daughter. Neither of them talk about Bellatrix.

“In the end, I realised family was more important than the Dark Lord, or purebloods, or any of that,” Narcissa says. “And I know you might never be able to forgive me, and I wouldn’t want that, for letting you leave because of your marriage to a muggleborn, but I missed my sister.” 

Andromeda is simply silent for a while. Finally, she speaks. “Do you remember when mother and father were asleep,” (and Bellatrix was in her room) “and I used to sneak into your bed because we were both afraid of the dark, and we’d talk till we both fell asleep.” 

“I remember,” Narcissa says. And then, “I’m sorry I never got to know your daughter.” 

And so Andromeda tells her. She tells her about her lively spirit and how she liked to change her hair colour and how clumsy she was, but how she had a talent for making people warm to her. And then Narcissa tells her about Draco, about how much he has been through. Later Andromeda meets Draco for the first time. It’s awkward and unfamiliar but it feels like the start of something. 

Andromeda takes Narcissa upstairs where Teddy is sleeping. Teddy is the most beautiful baby in the world when he is sleeping, and Narcissa’s hard lines soften when she sees him. She almost looks like a little girl again. 

* * *

Life is never easy. There are days when Andromeda still feels alone. She can’t just slot back into her sister’s life, nor her sister into hers. There are times when Molly is busy and Harry is busy and Teddy is sleeping or watching a TV program (Ted had set up the TV before he had gone on the run) and Andromeda feels like she can’t talk to anyone.

Sometimes she talks to Ted. In her head, she tells him about her day, and how much she misses him. It sometimes makes her sad, but it always makes her feel better at the same time. 

Other days Andromeda’s life feels bursting. The holes that Ted and Nymphadora left will never be filled but there is no longer just a black space around them. Instead Andromeda finds friends and family where she would not expect it. 

She goes to dinner with Teddy to Harry and Ginny’s apartment. She sees the loving looks the pair exchange and it reminds her of her and Ted. 

Other times Molly hosts dinner, and Harry and Hermione and Andromeda and Teddy show up as well as all the Weasleys. Teddy likes being the centre of attention, and he always gets lots at these dinners. 

Sometimes Ron and Hermione come over too. Hermione talks to Andromeda about the ministry, and even persuades her to promise to come in one day, and help her look over laws relating to ancient families, discrimination laws and so on. 

“Why me?” Andromeda asks one time. Hermione simply smiles. 

Ron is teaching Teddy how to play wizards chess. Ginny buys him a broom for his second birthday. Teddy is learning how to say Harry’s name. (His first word was  _ Gran _ . Andromeda loves to tell that story to anyone who will listen, which is a surprisingly large amount of people.)

Sometimes Andromeda meets Narcissa for tea, and Draco comes along too. Slowly those meetings become less strange and more a part of her life. She hopes that Teddy will grow up knowing his Uncle Draco, as he will certainly grow up knowing Uncle Harry and Ron, and Aunt Ginny and Hermione and so on...

Andromeda sometimes reflects that Harry was right. Teddy will certainly be loved by many. Andromeda feels blessed to be among them. 

Life goes on and sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down. Andromeda thinks of her husband and her daughter every day. She misses his laugh and her cheeky smile and the glint in both of their eyes. She misses dinners with Nymphadora and Remus, she misses stolen kisses with Ted. 

She remembers them and she goes on. She visits their graves every so often and just stands there for a while and thinks. She lives and loves for them. That is all she can do, and it’s more than enough. 

* * *

Andromeda sits in her living-room sometimes, on quiet days where Teddy sleeps or plays happily, quiet enough to hear the large blue clock going  _ tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock _ . She listens to it and hears promises kept.


End file.
